Writer, Editor, General Wordsmith

Digital Marginalia

I walk around with the constant dread that I am going to forget something. Things to do, ideas that float through my head, stuff I see that I think is clever. It is especially bad in that moment of time between when the lights go off and I fall asleep where I get a handful of good ideas or lines that wander through my head that are really, really good. Do I turn on a light and scribble them down? Do I try to write them down in the dark and wake up in a Seinfeld-esque situation? Do I flip open the notes app on my phone, take it down, and risk disrupting my cycle of slumber?

Often enough, I fall asleep. I anticipate that I’ve lost anywhere between $400K and $2.5 million worth of ideas in that space.

I have been writing notebooks in pencil lately, so I can go back to highlight and expand on the ideas I have with a pen at a later date. I still clip stuff I dig out of the newspaper. I mark up books like crazy, leave sticky notes on the edge, and then risk losing that thought forever as the book lives on the shelf, spine out, notes in. I suppose I could find the newspaper article online and save it to my Pocket, or keep a giant index file of notes that I’ve taken from the books I read. Mostly, I just hope that the idea of whatever I read comes across my mind again, and I’ve had enough sense to save it where I can find it.

Then again, I don’t want to share my digital marginalia with the world, I’d rather just keep it to myself. Remember, I have lost MILLIONS of dollars to this. Maybe.

I’ve been experimenting some with keeping digital marginalia of the stuff that really jumps out at me. At the most simple, I might snap a photo and give it a quick title, and tuck it away to my Google Keep.

If I’m reading on my tablet (it’s a Samsung, with an S-pen) I’ll do a screen grab of the text and scribble all over it before saving it, again, to my Keep.

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